“Joseph—Father of Jesus” Matthew 1:18-25

“Joseph—Father of Jesus” (A Father’s Day Message) Matthew 1:18-25 -Pastor Bob Leroe, Cliftondale Congregational Church, Saugus, Massachusetts

One summer evening during a violent thunderstorm, a mother was tucking her small son into bed. She was just about to turn off the light when he asked in a trembling voice, "Mommy, will you sleep with me tonight?" His mother smiled and gave him a reassuring hug. "I can’t, Dear," she said, "I have to sleep with your daddy." After a long silence he said, "The big sissy."

There are certain sayings we associate with our fathers. Here are some typical Dad quotes:

“Ask your mother.”
”Don’t worry; it’s only blood.”
”Do I look like I’m made of money?”
“I’m not sleeping; I was watching that show.”
”I’m not just talking to hear my voice.” ”A little dirt never hurt anyone; just wipe it off.”
”We’re not lost!”
”No, we’re not there yet.”
”Don’t make me stop this car!”

I looked in my Bible for a quote from another prominent father, Joseph, and to my surprise I couldn’t find one. I never thought about this before, but Joseph doesn’t say a single word in the Gospels. He listens and obeys. We might assume his words are recorded, because we can imagine the conversations he had with Mary, and the Angel Gabriel. He can “hear” him talking to the innkeeper. We can visualize him teaching Jesus about carpentry…but then he fades from the scene. It is widely thought that Joseph was much older than Mary, and when Jesus began His ministry, Mary appears alone, and although the Bible doesn’t say she’s a widow, we can figure that Joseph has since died.

Joseph probably thought his life was pretty well planned. His marriage and his vocation were all arranged neatly for him, but then his world came crashing down. He discovered that his bride-to-be was pregnant. We know that Joseph was a man of integrity—he wanted to do the right thing, in the right way. He considered divorcing Mary when he learned of her pregnancy, but wanted to do so without calling attention to the reason, whereas he could have had her publicly disgraced or even stoned to death for adultery. Instead, he risks being questioned about Mary’s pregnancy and marries her. In those days, a marriage contract was worked out between families, and the engaged couple continued to live with their parents till their wedding. The townspeople could well have thought Mary and Joseph didn’t wait till their wedding. Joseph protected their reputation by moving up the wedding date, and the Roman census took them far away from the town’s questioning eyes.

Although Joseph came from the royal lineage of King David (thanks to the Gospel genealogy), we can easily picture him as a humble man. The brief portrait of him in Scripture suggests he was a quiet, unobtrusive man, available when needed, willing to endure hardship and disappointment. Looking forward to fathering his own child, Joseph was faced with being a step-father to a child not his own. He accepted the humbling circumstances surrounding Jesus’ birth. He trusted the providential care of God every step of the way. He didn’t have any parenting books, any training on how to be a father to the Son of God, but he possessed faith and compassion. Bible scholars portray Joseph as an effective provider and protector of the family.


A Sunday School was putting on a Christmas pageant which included the story of Mary and Joseph coming to the inn. One boy wanted so very much to be Joseph, but when the parts were handed out, a boy he didn’t like was given that part, and he was assigned to be the inn-keeper instead. He was pretty upset about this but he didn’t say anything to the director.

During all the rehearsals he thought what he might do the night of performance to get even with this rival who got to be Joseph. Finally, the night of the performance, Mary and Joseph came walking across the stage. They knocked on the door of the inn, and the inn-keeper opened the door and asked them gruffly what they wanted.

Joseph answered, "We’d like to have a room for the night." Suddenly the inn-keeper threw the door open wide and said, "Great, come on in and I’ll give you the best room in the house!"

For a few seconds poor little Joseph didn’t know what to do. Thinking quickly on his feet, he looked inside the door past the inn-keeper then said, "No wife of mine is going to stay in dump like this. Come on, Mary, let’s go to the barn." -And once again the play was back on track!

In all the Christmas pageants performed, Joseph doesn’t get a starring role, but his part is so important. His task is to watch over Mary and the baby Jesus. Joseph had the important role of caring for the needs of others.

When our lives take a nasty turn, we cry out, like Joseph must have cried out, "God, how can this be?" But like Joseph, we hear a still small voice from God saying, "Trust Me." God’s ways are not always our ways. His thoughts are higher than our thoughts, and we may never understand everything that God is doing this side of heaven, but God says, "Trust Me, and all things will work together for good."

It’s been said the best thing a father can do for his kids is to love their mother. Joseph’s love for Mary reflected Paul’s definition: "Love is patient and kind. Love does not envy or boast; it is not proud or rude. Love is not self-seeking or easily angered. It keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil, but it rejoices in the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres" (I Cor 13). Instead of being indignant, Joseph accepted this child as his own. Joseph accepted the revealed will of God. He followed the instructions—journeying from Nazareth to Bethlehem, then to Egypt, then back to Nazareth. We can easily picture Joseph receiving his son as a gift from God.

Joseph became a father to the Messiah, Who would teach us all about the acceptance and grace of God. Joseph is charged with naming their son and thus defining His mission. The name Jesus means “Savior”. Archeologists have uncovered the ruins of Sapphoris, a thriving city near Nazareth. It is believed that Joseph spent much time there working on carpentry jobs, probably with his son and apprentice, Jesus. When Jesus returned to His hometown, the people responded, “Isn’t this the son of Joseph, the carpenter?”

Was Joseph a perfect father? No, of course not. We’re told that after Jesus was born, Mary and Joseph had children of their own, and they did not become believers in Jesus till after His resurrection. In spite of what their parents tried to tell them of their older brother’s miraculous birth, they refused to accept it. Parents can  teach their children, but they cannot give their children faith. They can tell their kids how to live, but they can’t make them moral persons. They can baptize their children, but they can’t make them believe. They can love their children, but they can’t give them eternal life. The influence of parents is important, but we individually choose to accept or reject faith in God.

There’s a lot I’d like to know about Joseph—where and when he was born, how he spent his days, what he said, when and how he died. The last we hear of him is when he made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem with Mary and Jesus, when Jesus was 12-years old. He was apparently a man of few words, but he did what he was supposed to do. We don’t know much about Joseph. We’re pretty sure he wasn’t afraid of thunderstorms! Scripture has left us with the most important knowledge: who he was: "a righteous man" (Mt 1:18). Joseph may have thought that being righteous involved doing the proper thing; he found out that it is also about being the right person.

Prayer: Lord God, when we observe the action of this mature, responsible man; when we study his compassionate involvement, his disciplined restraint, his plain obedience, all woven together into righteous action, we know that we too can live in accordance with Your will for our lives.

Matthew 1:18-25

Commentary on Gospel by Ben Witherington

This lection is, of course, one of the prime passages used and preached on during the Christmas season. The challenge is to say something fresh but yet familiar and reassuring about it.

An important exegetical perspective that needs to be kept in mind is the Matthean text tells the story more from the angle of Joseph's perspective, while the Lukan birth narrative tells the tale from the perspective of how things affected and were seen by Mary. What the two narratives have in common is interesting: 1) a birth in Bethlehem, even though the family is from Nazareth and Jesus would be called Jesus of Nazareth; 2) a virginal conception; 3) a pregnancy during the engagement period caused through the agency of the Holy Spirit; and 4) Joseph resolves to accept Jesus into his life and family, as is shown by subsequent events.

Though it has become fashionable in some scholarly circles to suggest the story of the miraculous conception of Jesus has analogies with the stories about the births of Emperors or Kings, in fact this is not really accurate. A story about a god coming down and raping a human woman is of a very different ilk than the story of a miraculous virginal conception through the power of the Holy Spirit, not through any sort of intercourse.

Furthermore, the story in Isaiah 6 about a virgin conceiving, while compatible with our story in Matthew 1, does not in fact specify a virginal conception. It simply says a nubile woman of marriageable age, who was indeed a virgin, would conceive and give birth to a child. Unlike Matthew 1, that text does not specify the means by which the virgin is impregnated, and all indications are that early Jewish were not looking for, nor did they think, Isaiah 6 predicted a miraculous conception.

This explains the shocked reaction of both Joseph in Matthew 1 and Mary in the Lukan account. The assumption a Torah-true Jew like Joseph must have made is Mary got pregnant in the usual manner, hence his decision to divorce her quietly. It took further divine intervention in the form of a dream to head off that disaster, and the disgracing and shaming (not to mention the potential stoning) of Mary.  In short, the potential scandal in this story, and the lack of a clear prediction of a virginal conception in Isaiah 6 or parallel in other birth narratives, means this story arose from an historical incident in the life of Mary and Joseph, and then was explained with the aide of the text of Isaiah 6. The First Evangelist uses Isaiah to provide proof that this surprising and unprecedented event was, in fact, a fulfillment of Scripture and all along a part of God's plan for human redemption.

Some background information about early Jewish marriages helps the exposition of this text. In the first place, engagement in this culture was a formal contractual matter, usually decided on by the two fathers in question (i.e. it was an arranged marriage), and was, in fact, the first stage of the marriage itself, to be complete some months hence by the formal wedding ceremony. The reason Matthew says that Joseph had resolved to "divorce" a woman he was only engaged to, is because engagement then was a legally binding contract, unlike engagement in the West today.

Secondly, we need to understand in that patriarchal culture, the birth of the first born son was all important and crucial to the family line and property transfer. The fact Joseph is prepared to give up the right to sire his own first born son and accept and even name Jesus (Yeshua/Joshua means "Yahweh saves") says a lot about the character of Joseph. It leads to the oddest genealogy ever in Matthew 1:1-17 in which Jesus is shoehorned into Joseph's genealogy by putting Mary into that genealogy despite the fact that it is a patrilineal genealogy (x begat y...). 

This is a narrative of surprising and unexpected events and suggests a God of unexpected actions. Finally, Matthew 1:25 is a crucial conclusion to our passage and suggests Mary and Joseph did not have marital relations until after the birth and naming of Jesus. The stories thereafter (see e.g. Mark 3:21-35 and Mark 6 and the parallels in Matthew) suggest Mary and Joseph, being good early Jews, went on to have numerous children, both boys and girls the natural way who are rightly called Jesus' brothers and sisters. In short, Matthew's Gospel affirms the virginal conception of Mary, but not her perpetual virginity, or for that matter her own immaculate conception by her mother. Those ideas are found only in much later Catholic traditions

Matthew 1:18-25

Commentary on Gospel by James Boyce

With its focus on Joseph as the chief character, Matthew's unique story of Jesus' birth will probably not be the model for any children's Christmas pageant, in many of which Joseph seems to walk in the shadows as a necessary,

if somewhat embarrassing, appendage. In contrast, Matthew's narrative takes great pains to identify Joseph as the father of Jesus, tracing out his link to King David in the elaborate genealogy that opens the gospel. And in our lesson, even if Jesus' birth is clearly a miracle of God's power through the Spirit, still Joseph is the real father, who by naming the child according to God's command, in effect adopts this child as his own. That adoption is no mere fiction, but becomes Matthew's way of ushering us into the mystery of the incarnation, apart from which this Jesus could not stand in the line of Davidic ancestry. If the mystery of the "word becoming flesh and dwelling among us" (John 1:14) were not enough, Matthew's story is a veritable cornucopia of Matthean themes that could occupy the preacher for this Sunday or through the year.

Genesis and New Creation

Though disguised in translations, twice (1:1, 18) Matthew describes what is happening in Jesus as a "genesis," a creation. This verbal link invites reflection on the place of this story in the story of God's creative work from the beginning. In the first story, the Spirit of God moved over the face of the deep. God spoke and the world came into being. Here again by the Spirit and promise of God a new creation comes into being. How far is God willing to go in order to make good on God's promises? Even to the point of doing creation all over again? Early Christians frequently imagined the Christ event, especially the resurrection of Jesus, as the eighth day of creation. What would it mean for the preacher to invite us Christians in this modern technologically savvy world to reflect on what happens in this Jesus as God's continuing act of sustaining creation?

Incarnation and Mystery

If God acts to create, it is precisely in this world that God meets us and works out the particular shapes and stories of mercy. Matthew's birth story underscores the common places of life-a Mary, a Joseph, the birth of a child; people faced with decisions involving religious traditions, law, and community or having to do with marriage, family or a decision to divorce-as the arenas in which God surprisingly enters human life with creative and transforming power. If God comes among the common and the everyday, the preacher can be the one who is able to point us to those everyday signs of God's presence which are in some sense an extension of the great sign of God's coming in the birth of this child of promise.

Obedience and Faith

Joseph, the central character in this story, is no wishy-washy person, but a person of strength and purpose. He is committed and faithful to his religious tradition and ready to act on that commitment. When the call of God comes to him through an angel in a dream, he is not just ruminating; he has already made a definite decision, "resolved" upon a course of action. Told against the backdrop of Old Testament stories of others to whom God's call has come, this story is noticeably different. When the call comes, Joseph speaks not one word either of question or objection. He simply acts directly and immediately in obedient response to the call. Both in the original and in translation, the story makes this clear by describing Joseph's actions of response with exactly the same words as used in the angel's instructions. Joseph becomes visibly and audibly an example of the power of God's call to transform our decisions and our lives. So here at the beginning, he is a model of faithful discipleship long before we hear Jesus' commission at the end to "Go and make disciples" of all nations.

Righteousness

Joseph makes his decision to divorce Mary because he is righteous (19). Here in this story we meet explicitly for the first time an important theme of Matthew's gospel. We are meant to ask, "What does righteousness look like?" And we are given a model of righteousness in Joseph's faithful response to God's call. The story also makes clear that this is no easy matter for Joseph or for us. What Joseph initially understands as the righteous thing to do is challenged directly by the call of God to act precisely opposite to what he saw and expected the law to demand. What happens when our notions of righteousness and justice come up against the ways of God's creative mercy? In Joseph we meet one who risks becoming disobedient in the eyes of the world-becoming an outcast to family and community-dare we say, even becoming sinful and suffering-for the sake of being obedient to God's call. So the story invites us to think of another in this story who became sin for us, that the promises of God might take shape in new creative power. When law and righteousness or justice seem to clash, how deep do the promises of God go? How far will discipleship lead us?

Of Dreams and Decisions

At every stage of this story, Joseph's decisions are prompted by God's intervention through a dream. As we prepare for Christmas and to receive this child we, too, might ask what happens when God is an intrusion into our nicely laid plans and decisions? How do we know when God is speaking to us and when it is just bad food? Depending on your perspective, intervention can be the good news of rescue or deliverance, or it can be just plain meddling. In Advent we pray, "Stir up your power, Lord, and come." Are we really ready to risk that such a prayer might be answered? To be open to this story means to invite the possibility that obedient discipleship may transform us and lead us in ways we had never imagined.

Promise and Fulfillment

This story is not all surprise. Matthew more than any other gospel writer presents the story of Jesus as fulfilling what was spoken through the prophets. The first of those many references occurs in this story. The miraculous birth and the name "Immanuel," God is with us, are scripted by God promises. That promise begins this story and stands again at its conclusion, "Remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age." Jesus is for Matthew the fulfillment of all of God's promises. And God's promises frame this story just as they frame each day of our lives.

What's in a Name?

The angel says, "You are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins." This is serious business. We belong to God and God will be with God's people. But just how far God is willing to go is left to our imaginations at this point in the story. But let it whet the appetite of hope. If even just the contemplation of that promise can so radically change of the life of even a righteous person, just imagine what its fulfillment in the story of Jesus might do in your life and mine!

By the Power of the Spirit

Robert Smith sums up this story well in his Augsburg Commentary (p. 36). This Jesus is "pure gift, holy surprise, a fresh act of God, a new genesis, a new creation." And all it comes about "from the Holy Spirit." We live with the awareness that God's power is among us and ready to lead us in ways that we can only imagine. Is that good news, or is the prospect a bit frightening? If we do not anticipate the Christmas event both with hope and with just a bit of anxious fear, then we are not sufficiently tuned to the implications of God's presence among us.

Psalm 37:1-9

Commentary on Psalm by Bobby Morris

A dear relative once told me, "You know, people don't have good sense until they get old."

Now, as then, I find a good deal of wisdom in his observation. In the present lectionary reading, we encounter a portion of a wisdom psalm spun by a sage who has grown old (verse 25). As younger, more idealistic students of the ancient wisdom school most certainly needed the direction of their senior mentors, so too we who are but infants in our faith require the nurture offered by scripture.

It is a question that the faithful have always grappled with: "How is it that the wicked often seem to prosper?" There could hardly be a more human response than for a faith still seeking understanding to become frustrated, angry, or even wrathful in the face of such a paradox. Yet, the life experiences of the sage offer in these verses a corrective to such a reactionary response. Three times in only nine verses (1, 7, 8) the writer admonishes: "Do not fret." Indeed, the Hebrew verb "thus" translated by the NRSV goes further than cautioning against an emotion. The real danger lies in the state of being in which one is "intensely worked up" or even "consumed" by the problem of the apparent prospering of the wicked. The verb has a reflexive sense in which the writer cautions readers not to inflict self-harm by bringing this state of being upon themselves.

One of the problems with this state of being is the impact it has on one's relationship with God. While the Psalter condones and even encourages questioning in dialogue with God, a state of self-consuming vexation with the wicked can lead to mistrust of God and even the questioning of the reality of God's power and dominion in the world.¹ Thus, it is no surprise that the sage twice exhorts that readers should trust in the Lord (verse 3, 5). Despite evidence which would seem to the contrary God is in control of the world and as a result, the prospering of evildoers will endure only briefly.

Shunning vexation and trusting God, however, does not mean that the faithful sit idly by and do nothing. Verse seven calls on believers to "be still" and "wait patiently." Although these would seem to be quite passive exhortations, close examination reveals a greater depth of meaning. The verse begins with not only "be still" (or be silent), but "be still before the Lord."

The sense here is to stand in awe of God, speechless in the face of the breadth of God's power and dominion. The implication is that God is in control and doing something in the world, otherwise there would be no reason to stand in awe. Further, wait patiently does not do justice to the second Hebrew imperative in the verse. The verb would be better translated "wait longingly." This nuance adds a more dynamic component to the waiting, again implying that God is at work now.² 

Since God is at work, believers too are called to be doing something. First and foremost, as mentioned above, this means trusting God and knowing that God is at work in the world. As a result, the faithful are called to "do good" (verse 3), "take delight in the Lord" (verse 4), and "commit your way to the Lord" (verse 5). If there is to be any kind of response on our part to the brief prospering of the wicked, these three things are it.

In short, stay true to who and whose we are. As a result, light shines onto the deeds and ways of the wicked so that they may be clearly seen for what they are and thus fade and wither as the sage promises in verse one. It is not we who shine this light, but God who "will make your vindication" ³  shine like the light, and the justice of your cause like the noonday (verse 6).

A pitfall to avoid here is the implication of works-righteousness, either in the text or in the presentation of the text. There are textual components that could be interpreted and presented in this way. After being told to "trust in the Lord" and "do good" in verse three, we hear: "[Y]ou will live in the land and enjoy security." What would appear to be exhortations followed by rewards also occur in verses four, five, and nine.

However, the only works-righteousness here is that which we may erroneously superimpose from our own theological points of departure. In verse three, there is no "so" in the Hebrew. In fact, the last two verbs of the verse are imperatives, just as the first two. Further, neither the "rewards" of the above-mentioned verses nor the swift end met by the wicked are the results of God waving a magic wand. They are, instead, the outcome of the respective activities.

In turning from God, the wicked will wither and fade just as in turning from water a body will dehydrate. Likewise, those who "do good"(verse 3), "take delight in the Lord" (verse 4), and expect the Lord to act (verse 9) will see the Lord act (verse 5) and will inherit the earth (verse 9). These things are certainly true because God promises them, even if we strain to understand until we attain the sense brought by old age!

---

¹Hans-Joachim Kraus, Psalms 1-59: A Commentary (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1988), 405.
²Similarly, the NRSV's "wait" in verse 9 might better be translated as "expect" to reflect the ongoing activity of God. The Hebrew verb here has the sense of looking and hope.
³The Hebrew word here is more usually translated as "righteousness."